Fred Hobson is the author of Mencken: A Life, Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain, The Silencing of Emily Mullen and Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood. He has been a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Humanities Center and has won several literary awards, including the Jules Landry Award in Southern Studies and the Lillian Smith Award for Nonfiction. A native of North Carolina, Hobson is Lineberger Professor of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, editor of the LSU Press Southern Literary Studies and co-editor of The Southern Literary Journal.